Sky+ has been the saviour of our television viewing since it arrived shortly after my son did (not a coincidence). For those non-UK citizens reading this blog Sky+ similar to the Tivo but more locked down as it comes from the main satellite TV company here. Anyway, it’s great and has totally changed my viewing habits to the point that I very rarely watch live TV anymore – and watch adverts less often. I keep meaning to upgrade the internal hard-drive but that would mean catching up on the viewing – which is just never going to happen. I’ll probably just get the HD version a few months after it comes out which has had a hard-drive upgrade to cope with the additional storage capacity HD broadcasts take.
This morning (Valentine’s day) the post man delivered a little red envelope addressed to me looking awfully like a Valentine’s card – my wife admitted that had I not been working from home she would have spent the whole day stewing over it wanting to steam the thing open to see who was sending me love notes (a couple of weeks after I’ve returned from a long business trip). I definitely would not have returned home to a romantic Valentines evening atmosphere. Turns out it was an advert from Sky+ to try and “show your love” to your friends by recommending them for Sky+. Not a bad piece of marketing as I was forced at dagger point to open it.
There was a similar campaign that got Jaguar into trouble; here's the link to the Advertising Standards page on it:
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/focus/case_studies/Jaguar.htm